In my last blog post, I discussed the: “So What?” Question I keep on my desk to remind me to keep asking it. The second note I have posted at my desk is: “Become Your Customer.” They embody some fundamental issues we need to address as we plan our efforts in Internet marketing or any other marketing medium. You would think that organizations would spend a lot of time “becoming their customer.” My experience is that, despite the lip service to the contrary, very few small to medium size organizations spend the effort needed to really understand their customers and what drives them. Without this understanding, our online marketing efforts are going to be less effective than they could be. I have previously addressed the need for Customer Insight. In this blog and the one to follow later this week I am going to discuss strategies to obtain customer insight, i.e. how to become your customer.
I will have considered this blog to be successful if I can convince someone out there to take more time at the front end of a project to do the homework necessary to better assure a successful outcome of their online marketing efforts. For those of you contracting with other organizations for your Internet marketing efforts, make sure they are providing adequate customer insight as part of their efforts and don’t hesitate to approve the budget to do it.
This goes double for website development. There are lots of website development resources out there who will build you a website and even provide search engine optimization services. They may have you fill out a form that gets at the various functionality, themes, pages, etc. you want as part of the website. That is all fine and good, but they are completely dependent on you to understand the customer and what makes that customer take action. If yours is a sophisticated organization that has the research at your fingertips and if you want to be heavily involved in the development process, then this is not a problem.
However, if your knowledge of your customer is anecdotal at best, then someone should take the time to “become the customer” and make sure that information is incorporated into the design of the website. Notice, I said design. That means that both the graphic image portrayed as well as the copy are all part of the “message” to reach that target market. I would not let anyone design a website that doesn’t first fully understand the customer. Either you educate them or they provide a “research” component to their services so that the information needed is acquired before website development begins. Later in this blog series I will discuss a comprehensive approach to website development that assures that customer needs and wants drives the process. Until then, here are some strategies you should utilize in your approach to online marketing. I’ve listed them in the order of increasing complexity.
- Document what you already know
- Interview current customers
- Interview those in your organization who interact with customers
- Intelligence gained from your existing website
- Acquire information from others’ research
- Survey current customers
- Conduct focus groups
- Incorporate “customer” feedback in the development process
In my next blog, Part 2 of 2, I will discuss each of these approaches in more detail. Please provide your own insights and comments on this topic.
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Tags: Brand + Technology, Internet Marketing, Non Linear Internet Marketing, Online Marketing
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